leonard belt



De@ 2, 1952 A P LEONARD 2,619,651

BELT

Filed Oct. 2. 1950 Fwe INVENTOR FJ lBy-r'yLe/onanl Z3 ATTORNEYS Patented Dec. 2, 1952 UNITED STATES PATENT oFFIcE 1 Claim.

This invention relates to wearing apparel, and has for an object the provision of a belt-type garment support worn on the inner surface of a skirt or trousers, and having a blouse or shirt contacting surface which will electively retain the same in proper position.

Another object of my invention is the provision of an elastic belt composed of a rubber material adapted to be secured to the inner surface of the raised portion of a garment by snap fasteners or other releasable means.

Still another object of the invention is to provide a belt of the type mentioned above having a pebbled or roughened face which will adhere to the cloth of a blouse or shirt, preventing it from working upwardly as commonly occurs.

A further advantage of my device lies in the fact that it may be quickly changed from one garment to another and its simplicity of construction makes it economical to manufacture and extremely serviceable in use.

These and other objects and advantages will become apparent from the following description of the present invention illustrated in the accompanying drawing, in which:

Figure 1 is a perspective view of the device attached to the waist of a garment.

Figure 2 is a detail view of the attaching face of the belt.

Figure '3 is a detail View of the blouse gripping face of the belt.

Figure 4 is a sectional view vof the invention.

Similar reference characters represent similar parts in the several figures.

A constant problem in maintaining a neat and attractive appearance of wearing apparel is presented by the fact that a womans blouse or a mans shirt tucked within a skirt or trousers, respectively, has an inevitable tendency to work upwardly with the slightest motion of the arms or body of the wearer, regardless of how neatly the upper garment is originally enclosed by the lower garment, it is a matter of time before the upper garment will commence to work upwardly, causing unattractive blousing of the material.

In order to remedy the above situation and also provide an efiicient means for supporting the lower garment, that is a skirt or trousers, I have devised a novel combination of a supporting means and a blouse gripping arrangement. As will be apparent from the drawing, it is my intention to first fashion an elongated strip I of a rubber Amaterial into a shape conventionally associated with a belt. This rubber material must of necessity be of suflicient tensile strength to prevent the possibility of ripping when in actual use around the waist of the wearer. At the same time the material must contain elastic properties to provide a comfortable and uniform gathering of the garment into a close fit about the body.

One face II designated as the outer face of the belt (that is that surface most remote from the wearers body) is provided with a series of spaced apart alined snap fastener studs I2. These studs provide the male portion of the fastening assembly and are retained in the rubber material by means of either projecting fingers I3 or a button flange embedded in thev rubber during the molding process.

A cap flange I4 fits directly on the surface of the rubber and assists the member I3 in securely grasping a portion of the rubber material by the snap fastener stud.

Cooperating with studs I2 are an equal number of snap fastener sockets I5 sewed in a horizontal series around the inner surface of the skirt or other garment. The sockets are evenly spaced about the garment as are the aforementioned studs, thereby enabling the belt to be quickly and easily inserted or removed from the garment.

In order to connect the free ends I6 and I'I of the belt after the garment has been placed about the waist of the wearer, I provide a hook element I8 and an eye I9 located on opposite ends of the belt. In order that the belt ends may overlap and be secured comfortably about the waist of the wearer the hook and eye will of course be located on opposite faces of the belt. The particular arrangement is more or less immaterial, but for the purpose of illustration I have shown hook I8 located on the outer face II' of the belt and the eye I9 on the inner or pebbled face 20. Hook I8 is basically well known in the art in that it is shaped in plan as the letter W. Each free end of the hook is provided with a projecting finger which extends into the rubber material and on its innermost end is provided with a flange or the like to provide ample surface for retaining the hook in the rubber material after it is molded in that position.

The eye I9 is merely a small vertical bar having the ends thereof embedded in the rubber in a similar manner to the ends of the hook previously mentioned. Thus it will be seen that when the ends of the belt are drawn together and overlapped such as shown in Figure 1, the point 2| of the hook will pass between the bar of eye I9 and the surface of the belt, whereupon the ten- 3 sion created in the elastic belt will retain the hook in engagement with the eye.

The inner face 20 of the belt is extremely important in that it is this surface that grips the cloth of the blouse and holds it in position within the skirt. This face is formed with an infinite number of pebble-like projections in an irregular pattern, which, due to the adhesive quality of the rubber, tend to prevent slippage between the cloth and the belt. In order to assure complete comfort to the wearer, the perimeter 22 of the blouse contacting face is beveled as shown in Figure 4. This prevents the possibility of any sharp edges bearing against the Wearers body which would of course be uncomfortable. The pebbled face 20 lies within the inner perimeter of the beveled portion 22.

In the operation of the device, the beltl is snapped into place within the waist portion of a skirt 23 or trousers, and the garment is then placed on the wearer. After the blouse or shirt to be worn in connection with the lower garment is properly tucked or otherwise placed inside of the skirt, the ends i6 and ll of the belt are drawn together and fastened in position'by means of the hook I8 and eye I9. The elastic quality of rubber material insures the slight and uniform gathering necessary to retain the garment in proper position on the-waist of the wearer. Due tothe pebbled or roughened rubber surface of `the belt the upper garment is retained in position, ,regardless of the activity of the wearer.

While I yhave shown and described a preferred form of my invention, it will be understood that variations in details of formmay be made without departure from the invention asdefined in the appended claim.

I claim:

A belt for attachment to the inner surface of a lower garment, comprising a unitary elongated strip of rubber, a series of spaced apart fastener elements, each having a portion thereof embedded in the outer face of said'belt, said fastener elements being adapted to cooperate With mating spaced apart fastener elements secured to the inner surface of a garment, means for releasably connecting the ends of said strip of rubber, said `means comprising a fastening'member formed of two cooperating elementaonev element of said member being located on one face and at one end of the belt, and having end portions embedded in the rubber, the other element being located on the other face and other end of the belt from the first said element and having end portions thereof embedded in the rubber, the inner face of said belt having a beveled periphery for lWearing comfort, the portion of the inner face of said belt lying within the inner perimeter of said beveled periphery being pebbled for retaining an upper garment in position.

PERRY LEONARD.

REFERENCES CITED The following referencesv are of recordA in the iile of this patent:

UNITED STATES PATENTS Number Name Date 701,333 Gross June 3190'2 1,683,691 Mulock Sept. 11,1928 2,194,734 Brenner Mar. 26, 1940 2,323,515 Caryvet al July 6, `1943 FOREIGN PATENTS Number Country Date 8,741 Great Britain 1911 38,321 Switzerland Nov. 20, 1906 447,137 Great Britain May 13,1936 

